RACING DUMB: Breaking Away At the Lucarelli & Castaldi Cup
“What a hard way to win a bike race!” A fellow rider joked at the finish line.
He was right, of course. This was the (deferred) opening race of the L&C series and I had already been warned that breakaways don’t tend to stay away in Prospect Park–– short, mostly flat loops that offer long lines of sight. Conventional wisdom suggests that the best plan is to 'straight chill' and wait for the final sprint. Maaaybe try something in the final lap or two. Anything more would be foolhardy.
I really did go into this with the intention of following this advice. I did. But after a few disjointed laps, and with the pace fluctuating, I threw it out the window and decided to go on 15-mile break.
With just over five laps to go, in the run into the hill, I found myself in second wheel. “This is a sprint lap,” I told myself, “people are bound to come flooding past any second.” And yet they didn’t… And we’re a quarter of the way up the hill and still no one is coming up…
So I decided to have a dig. The plan was improvised but simple: Be decisive.
In the past, I’ve slowly ramped up to max speed, allowing people to latch on. This time, I would go into a full sprint up to the KOM and then fade into 10 minutes of V02. After that, all bets were off. Drop it down to threshold and hang on maybe?
After the initial attack, I looked back and saw no one following. Cool. The elastic was stretching but had not yet snapped. So I put my head down and gave it the best ten minutes I had.
I will not lie to you, the next 4.5 laps were not a ton of fun. For the first couple of laps, I was mostly expecting to get reeled back.
With three laps to go, I genuinely considered packing it in. But then I remembered that that would be a terrible way for a break to end so I kept going.
At 2 laps to go, my legs started to feel heavy and slow. Still, I just focused on my ride computer and forced myself to keep the watts above an imaginary line. “Think about how much easier this is going to be in a lap’s time.”
It was only after cresting the hill on the final lap that I actually knew I had it. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see a charging peloton, instead I only saw joggers and Citibikes in the walking lane.
I rolled around the final corner and coasted across the line. Definitely one of my favourite moments on a bike so far.
The post-up could have been worked on, I could have remembered to remove my neck warmer, or wiped the snot off my face. Still, I wouldn’t change it. It all sort of spoke to the fact that this wasn’t the plan since breakaways don’t tend to stay away in Prospect Park.
